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Rain and Surface Temperature Part 3

I have recently shown how the difference between surface maxima for Northern Australia and Temperature of the Lower Troposphere (TLT) for Australia as a whole is very largely due to rainfall variation in the Northern Australian region alone.
Fig. 1:  Northern Australian rainfall compared with the difference between North Australian surface maxima and Australian TLT (120 month means)

Nth rain v nth diff 120m
Now I turn to comparison with another region: that of Tropical Land.  All but six degrees of Latitude of the Northern Australian region is in the tropics, so most of it will be covered by TLT for Tropical Land. How much influence does Northern Australian rainfall have on the difference between Northern Australian surface maxima and TLT for all land in the tropics around the globe?
Fig. 2: Northern Australian rainfall compared with the difference between North Australian surface maxima and Global Tropical Land TLT (12 month means)

Nth rain v tropic land diff 12m

Fig. 3: Northern Australian rainfall compared with the difference between North Australian surface maxima and Global Tropical Land TLT (decadal means)

Nth rain v tropic land diff 120m

Considering that the Tropical Land TLT measures temperature above large tracts of Africa, South Asia, and Central and South America as well as tropical Australia, this result is amazing: on a decadal timescale, Northern Australian rainfall variation alone accounts for the same proportion of the surface- tropospheric difference of northern Australia surface maxima- Australia TLT as northern Australia surface maxima- tropical land TLT.

Surface temperatures cannot be understood separately from rainfall, and especially tropical rainfall. We can also conclude that as the decadal comparison of North Australian rain and surface-atmospheric differences have similar results for both Australia and Tropic Land datasets, UAH Version 6.0 represents TLT in various regions very well. Further, if the rest of the world’s tropical land areas behave as Australia does, then the world’s climate is dominated by tropical rainfall.

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This entry was posted on December 2, 2015 at 6:52 pm and is filed under climate, temperature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Rain and Surface Temperature Part 3”

  1. Neville Says:
    December 2, 2015 at 7:14 pm

    Ken isn’t this dominance of tropical rainfall over climate the same as claimed by Willis Eschenbach over the last few years?
    BTW November temps for UAH V 6 show a drop in global temp of 0.1 C since October. And a drop of 0.21 C in the NH. Why is the NH showing these big swings?

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/12/uah-v6-global-temperature-update-for-november-2015-0-33-deg-c/

    • kenskingdom Says:
      December 3, 2015 at 5:11 am

      Yes this seems to support Willis’ hypothesis, although I thought Willis was mainly concerned with tropical oceans, whereas my analysis is for land. The UAH dataset for November won’t be available for another week or so. NH has much greater land area than SH.

  2. Martin Says:
    January 26, 2016 at 2:44 pm

    Ken, I have been having a bit of a look at rainfall in Tasmania and am keen to do more analysis. It seems to have been dry down here, the last four months in particular; however, different stations have different stories and the low rainfall is certainly not unprecedented as many people tend to say off the cuff. Also many/some stations have missing data that could be infilled/interpolated from neighbouring stations that have similar trends. The fist step is getting the daily data. No doubt I will end up downloading data station by station but thought I would ask if there is a quicker way to do this?

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